Ex Parte Hinton et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 6, 201612832307 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 6, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 12/832,307 07/08/2010 63400 7590 06/08/2016 IBM CORP. (DHJ) c/o DAVID H. JUDSON 15950DALLAS PARKWAY SUITE 225 DALLAS, TX 75248 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Heather M. Hinton UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www .uspto.gov ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. A US920100080US 1 4196 EXAMINER KIM,TAEK ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2492 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/08/2016 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address( es): mail@davidjudson.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte HEATHER M. HINTON, STEVEN A. BADE, JEB LINTON, and PETER RODRIGUEZ Appeal2014-007108 Application 12/832,307 Technology Center 2400 Before DANIEL N. FISHMAN, NABEEL U. KHAN, and AMBER L. HAGY, Administrative Patent Judges. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection of claims 1-33. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ). We reverse. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is International Business Machines Corporation. App. Br. 1. Appeal2014-007108 Application 12/832,307 THE INVENTION Appellants' invention relates generally to management of user sessions in a federated environment. Spec. 1 :5---6. Exemplary independent claim 1 is reproduced below. 1. A method to manage access to resources hosted in a shared pool of configurable computing resources, comprising: receiving a registration request to initiate a user's registration to use resources hosted in the shared pool of configurable computing resources; during a registration process initiated by receipt of the registration request, receiving a federated single sign-on (F-SSO) request, the F-SSO request having an assertion associated therewith that includes authentication data for use to enable direct user access to a resource hosted in the shared pool of configurable computing resources; attempting to validate the assertion using a software component executing on a hardware element; upon validation of the assertion, deploying the authentication data within the shared pool of configurable computing resources to enable direct user access to the resource. REFERENCES and REJECTIONS 1. Claims 1, 2, 7, 10, 11, 16, 19, 20, 25, and 28-33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a) as anticipated by Platt et al. (US 2009/0249440 Al; Oct. 1, 2009). 2. Claims 3---6, 12-15, and 21-24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Platt and Taniguchi et al. (US 2006/0117104 Al; June 1, 2006). 2 Appeal2014-007108 Application 12/832,307 3. 1"11 • l'"'\ /""'\. -1,..., -1 l'"'\ l""llo / 1 l""llo,..,') , 1 • , 1 1 ,..... ,_ TT r'1 l"I lAanns cs, 'J, l 1, ics, LO, ana Lr stana reJectea unaer j) u.~.L. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Platt and Bagepalli et al. (US 2009/0064300 Al; Mar. 5, 2009). ANALYSIS The Examiner finds Platt discloses the limitation of "deploying authentication data within the shared pool of configurable computing resources" by describing that a proxy request is sent to the protected resource comprising user credentials to sign in on behalf of the user. Final Act. 6 (citing Platt Fig. 10, i-fi-154, 78, 175-176, 191-193); see also Ans. 9. Appellants argue "[i]n Platt ... there is no disclosure or suggestion of deploying 'authentication data' that, in tum, enables the user to perform 'direct access."' 3 App. Br. 9-10. Appellants contend that "as a matter of claim construction, the 'authentication data' deployed (via the last step of the claim) must be the same 'authentication data' that is a part of the alleged 'assertion' associated with the F-SSO request." Reply Br. 2. Appellants argue the Examiner errs in finding that Platt's proxy request comprises the same user credentials (the authentication data) that were in the assertion. See Reply Br. 4. According to Appellants, "Platt does not deploy anything into the 'protected app' ... let alone the same authentication data, if any, that is included in the singlepoint cookie." Reply Br. 5. 2 The heading on page 9 of the Final Rejection lists claim 28 as rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Platt and Bagepalli, but the substance of the rejection is directed to claim 27. Consequently, we treat the rejection as a rejection of claim 27, rather than claim 28. 3 Appellants present additional arguments in their Appeal Brief. However, because the identified argument is dispositive of the appeal, we do not reach the merits of these additional arguments. 3 Appeal2014-007108 Application 12/832,307 We agree with Appellants that Platt does not disclose that the proxy request comprises the same user credentials that were included in the assertion sent in the corresponding F-SSO request (the AuthZ request with the SinglePoint Cookie). In particular, Platt discloses that the proxy server is allowed to make the request but it does not disclose that this request contains the SinglePoint cookie with the required user credentials. Platt i-f 192. As Appellants point out, Platt discloses only that the response back from the protected app is modified to include the SinglePoint cookie, but not the proxy request to the protected app. Id. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of independent claims 1, 10, and 19, which contain substantially the same limitation and which were rejected for the same reasons. See Final Act. 5-6. For the same reasons, we also do not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 2-9, 11-18, and 20-33, which depend from one of the aforementioned independent claims. DECISION The Examiner's rejection of claims 1-33 is reversed. REVERSED 4 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation